Friday 27 November 2020

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Dæmons Episode Two


Yates and Benton are having as much fun as the Master, but that is because they were watching a different TV channel. This could have killed the dramatic tension so carefully established at the end of part one by having a comedic moment at this point, but instead it only sustains it and delays the resolution of the cliffhanger. They soon change channels to watch the dig programme, and see Jo and the unconscious Doctor for a few seconds before

It's easy to imagine a modern version of The Dæmons could play even more with the medium of television, in the style of Ghostwatch or the 2018 Hallowe'en 'live' episode of Inside No. 9, although it is equally easy to imagine BBC management* not allowing this precisely because of what happened with Ghostwatch.

Back in the cavern, the Master says
"To do my will shall be the whole of the law."
and his cultists hesitatingly reply with
"To do thy will shall be the whole of the law."
as if they are only just realising how deep the shit is they have gotten themselves into, and that it is too late to back out now.

The Doctor looks frozen solid, even when they take him back to the pub. The mannys from the TV programme and a doctor (but not the Doctor) from the village think Professor Horner and the Doctor are both ded, until the doctor (not the Doctor) hears the Doctor's pulse and two hearts.

The next morning Yates and Benton fly in by helicopter, and see the giant "hoofmarks" leading out from the dig site, from an animal "at least 30 feet tall."
They meet up with Jo and immediately go to the pub - not for drinks, that's where the still unconscious Doctor is having his sleeps.


The Brigadier is on the telephone finding out that the Doctor, Jo, Yates, Benton and his helicopter are all away at Devil's End having fun without him. It's like he missed the first session of their RPG and has to be brought into the plot and get caught up with what has happened so far as quickly and efficiently as possible. This makes for an amusing scene that only works with the Brigadier because he is the character who is supposed to be in charge of the others.

Benton finds Miss Hawthorne, who had been captured off-screen by the Master's henchmanny Gavin, and rescues her. In hiding from Gavin, they find the door down to the cavern, where Miss Hawthorne gives Benton the exposition about "Mr Magister" and says:
"Oh, I should have realised at once, 'magister' is the name given to the leader of a black magic coven."
She doesn't know that he's really the Master though - she must have not watched the rest of this season, lol.

Gavin comes back with a gun and has a fight with Benton until Benton falls on the Master's special evil stone and is knocked out by it. Gavin forces them out of the church, but then he sees a large POV monster and tries to shoot it while Benton and Miss Hawthorne run away. They are the sensible ones, because the POV monster pewpewpews Gavin and he disappears. In other words, this scene plays out exactly like a typical monster encounter in a game of Call of Cthulhu. The POV monster then zooms into the cavern and finds the Master's special stone.

A manny is driving along in his van when he suddenly feels the need to crash it and get out of the van to hold his head - which is lucky for him, because the van then explodes.

The Doctor wakes up and shouts
"Eureka!"
although he is nowhere near a bath. The Doctor is feeling well again, and comes down to the main pub set with Yates and Jo in time for Miss Hawthorne to arrive with Benton. She fills them in on what has happened, ending on
"The new vicar. He calls himself Magister."


"Magister? Yes, of course, I should have known."
"What?"
"Jo, did you fail Latin as well as Science? Magister is the Latin word for Master!"

The Brigadier drives up to the van-driving manny from earlier and finds there is now an invisible "heat barrier" there that sets fire to his stick. I love the way he is completely unfazed by this and simply says
"Must be some sort of heat barrier."
He then telephones Yates to find out what has happened and is equally unfazed by Yates's summation of the story so far, although he does have something of an understated 'Oh FFS!' look on his face when he hears the Master is involved.

The Doctor and Jo go back to the dig site to investigate. They find a tiny spaceship, and the Doctor begins to explain:
"About a hundred thousand years ago..."
But he doesn't get any further than that right now, because the Master has sent Bok to kill them. He runs in and goes "Rar!" and, as scary cliffhangers go, well... let's just say I've seen scarier.


D'aww, with his derpy tongue Bok is so cute!


* The nearest the series has moved in attempting something like this was in the 2007 episode Blink, which not only broke the fourth wall by having the viewers watching at home count as witnesses to the Weeping Angels (thus preventing them from moving while on-screen), but also ended with a montage of real-world statues - with the implication that any one of them could be a Weeping Angel really.
Considering that Blink is one of the most highly-regarded Doctor Who stories made since the series returned to BBC TV in 2005, and how much the makers of the series love to revisit their successes (until these lead to diminishing returns, and sometimes still even then), it is perhaps even more surprising that there has not been any subsequent attempt at taking this any further, which I see as additional evidence that the BBC management must be standing in the way.

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